ATROCITIES OF THE AREOIS. 243 
kind of food was prepared, and large bales of native 
cloth were also provided, as presents to the Areois, 
among whom it was divided. The greatest pecu¬ 
liarity, however, connected with this entertainment 
was, that the restrictions of tabu, which prohibited 
females, on pain of death, from eating the flesh of 
the animals offered in sacrifice to the gods, were 
removed, and they partook, with the men, of the 
pigs, and other kinds of food considered sacred, 
which had been provided for the occasion. Music, 
dancing, and pantomime exhibitions, followed, and 
were sometimes continued for several days. 
These, though the general amusements of the 
Areois, were not the only purposes for which they 
assembled. They included 
i AI1 monstrous, all prodigious things;’ 
and these were * abominable, unutterable/ In some 
of their meetings, they appear to have placed their 
invention on the rack, to discover the worst pollu¬ 
tions of which it was possible for man to be guilty, 
and to have striven to outdo each other in the most 
revolting practices. The mysteries of iniquity, and 
acts of more than bestial degradation, to which 
they were at times addicted, must remain in the 
darkness in which even they felt it sometimes ex¬ 
pedient to conceal them. I will not do violence to 
my own feelings, or offend those of my readers, 
by details of conduct, which the mind cannot con¬ 
template without pollution and pain. I should 
not have alluded to them, but for the purpose of 
shewing the affecting debasement, and humiliating 
demoralization, to which ignorance, idolatry, and 
the evil propensities of the human heart, when un¬ 
controlled or unrestrained by the institutions and 
relations of civilized society and sacred truth, are 
